The FIFA World Cup 2022, National Identity, and the Politics of Women’s Sports Participation in Qatar

Abstract

This article provides a nuanced socio-cultural study of women’s sports in Qatar. While acknowledging the World Cup as one of several recent factors contributing to the increased participation of Qatari women in sports, the study aims to move beyond prevalent neo-Orientalist notions of women’s empowerment. The multi-layered approach involves deconstructing the concepts surrounding ‘modern sports', placing them within the politics of identity, and contextualizing colonial legacies, especially in football, across the broader Middle East region. This exploration widens to illuminate the complex and multi-layered links between sports and the politics of gendered national identity. By centering on socio-cultural dynamics, this research seeks to dispel prevailing myths around women and sports in Qatar, offering a more focused perspective that delves into the complex interplay of cultural, societal, and identity factors influencing women’s sports in the country.

Keywords:

• National identity
• Qatar
• women
• sports
• FIFA2022

Introduction

Interest in sports has increased over the past several decades, yet the path to participation is not universally open to everyone. Despite the increase in athleticism globally, women worldwide continue to face systematic, structural, and social obstacles preventing them from achieving full integration into the sports arena. These obstacles are rooted not only in gender, but also in other factors such as class (privilege), ethnicity, citizenship, and religion. Additionally, women’s participation in sports and related trends are direct and intended consequences of larger national goals and vision. In this article, I use the lenses of intersectionality and post-colonial nation-building to explore citizen women’s sports participation in the Gulf region and particularly in Qatar. This context serves to illustrate the many overlapping factors affecting women’s participation in sports. In addition, it challenges simplistic and neo-Orientalist notions of women’s empowerment in Qatar.

Qatar, situated in the Arab Gulf region, is one of the region’s smaller states. A British protectorate prior to 1971, it has since evolved into one of the wealthiest nations globally and plays a significant role in the Middle East’s regional politics. As an Arab and Muslim country, Qatar’s national identity and policies are profoundly influenced by these cultural elements. Although it did not experience full colonization as other countries did, Qatar’s national institutions and policies have been shaped by the post-colonial era, both physically and discursively.

Sports represent a component of culture and national identity, and major sports institutions such as the Federation of International Football Associations (FIFA) and sports mega events (SMEs) are also situated in the politics of nation-building through the institutionalization of the concept of modern sports. SMEs involve more than just playing a game – they also encompass the socio-political agendas of the stakeholders invested in the game. In particular, football is rooted in colonial legacies, owing to imperial Britain introducing it to many countries.

In the post-colonial aftermath, Qatar’s approach to sports in general diverged significantly from that of European nations. It assumed a distinctive form, often characterized as a hybrid sporting culture that evolved from local practices and the realities surrounding national sports. Consequently, as Qatar made history by becoming the first Muslim Arab country to host the World Cup in 2022, questions arose about the translation of FIFA’s ideals – such as intercultural understanding and opposition to racism and discrimination – to a non-European context, beyond the cultural hegemony of the dominant Euro-centric discourse on human rights. Similarly, new trends and concepts around football culture have surfaced due to Qatar’s distinct socio-political context, including the incorporation of football culture into local neighborhoods and the tradition of watching matches in traditional majalis (public sitting rooms) or private meeting spaces.

The link between international sports and national identity provides a crucial context for exploring broader themes such as nation-building, sports as a tool of soft diplomacy, and the inherent male-centeredness and patriarchy in these constructs. The World Cup 2022 serves as one noteworthy example, illustrating how sports can be strategically employed to bolster national identity. While its impact on Qatari women’s sports participation may betangential, the event serves as a pivotal moment to amalgamate diverse elements. Here, we can consider the interconnected dynamics of national identity, sociopolitical identity, gender, patriarchy, and sports as a platform for societal participation.

The aim of this article is to explore the complexities surrounding Qatari women’s sports participation, particularly within the context of gendered national identity construction in post-colonial Qatar. Departing from the conventional approach of using sports participation as a broad indicator of ‘women’s empowerment’, this research employs a more nuanced approach.

Firstly, the research first deconstructs key concepts surrounding the modern sports. This involves situating them within identity politics and contextualizing the colonial legacies of football in the Middle East region. By doing so, the study aims to highlight the connection between sports and the construction of post-colonial Qatar’s national identity.

Secondly, the article delves into the complex layers surrounding women’s participation in sports. This in-depth exploration aims to provide a detailed understanding and offer new perspectives on the intricate link between sports and identity politics in Qatar.

Thirdly, the research discusses prominent female athletes and sports personalities in Qatar, examining them as icons of female sports participation through the lens of intersectional feminism and identity politics. The article presents a nuanced discussion on why certain women are highlighted as icons of women’s empowerment in sports, while others are not. This article systematically explores the intersection of modern sports, women, identity politics, and Qatar’s national identity. It follows a structured roadmap:

• International Sports and National Identity

• Colonial Legacies of Sports

• Gender Politics, Patriarchy, Women, and Sports

• Women and Sports Participation in Qatar

• Qatar’s Famous Female Sports Icons

• Conclusion

Through these aims, this study addresses a literature gap on women and sports in the Gulf region, providing an alternative understanding of women’s sports participation in Qatar. This understanding rests on a nuanced and multi-layered approach to investigating the link between sports and women’s empowerment in the public sphere. The research engages with multiple theories to facilitate a comprehensive discussion on the politics of sports at the intersection of gender and nation-building strategies in post-colonial Qatar. Ultimately, the article aims to demonstrate how women’s sports participation is situated within larger national identity politics, utilizing women’s empowerment as a discourse to foster a new national identity through sports participation.

Methodology and Research Methods

The research period for this article is August 2022 to September 2023, aligning with the FIFA 2022 World Cup in Qatar. Methodologically, my examination of women’s sports participation in Qatar, within the context of national identity politics, involved identifying and deconstructing the interplay of modern sports in the Middle East, considering both colonial legacies and gendered nation-building strategies.

In the initial phase, I employed post-colonial theory, drawing from Chatterjee’s ‘inner and outer domain¹, Bhabha’s concept of ‘hybridity’², AbuLughod’s ‘Remaking Women in Arab World’³, use of ‘alternate modernity’ concerning gender and Islam in Muslim societies. In the subsequent step, I sought to discern how increased women’s sports participation and its association with national identity were woven into the broader nation-building process. Using a gender lens grounded in intersectional feminist theory, I delved into the selective narratives and promotion of female icons, examining their evolution and underlying motivations. This approach underscored the diversity among Qatari women and illuminated the intricate relationship between intersectionality mechanisms and discourses linking women’s sports participation to gendered national identity politics.

The study relied on mixed-methods qualitative research, encompassing the analysis of primary sources and also semi-structured interviews with women in Qatar. Textual analysis involved analyzing government documents such as Qatar National Vision 2030, other policies, official media accounts, news agency announcements, newspaper articles, images, and online interviews with various female sporting figures and stakeholders. Social media ethnography⁴ played a pivotal role, engaging with platforms like Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube as rich sources for understanding power relations, civil society debates, and information dissemination in the Gulf region.

To complement this research, semi-structured interviews were conducted with 15 women in Qatar, aged 19 to 24. These interviews provided key insights into these women’s lived realities and their perspectives on women’s sports participation. While the timeframe limited the depth of the research, these interviews yielded crucial information on challenges, obstacles, and perceptions, guiding the thematic development of the article, especially through the overall intersectional lens. Although recognizing their constraints within societal structures, these women’s voices offered nuanced understandings of personal positionalities on the subject.

International Sports and National Identity

This study conceives of modern sports – with their prime manifestations in international events such as the World Cup – as a multi-layered game played in a political, colonial, and gendered arena. I unpack each of these layers to explain the politics underlying modern sports. The discussion then shifts to the nuances and some common assumptions around women’s sports participation in Qatar.

Contemporary sports are interlinked with national politics⁵ and can be viewed as a cornerstone of building national solidarities and a process for instilling a feeling of ‘us vs them’.⁶ National sports in the twenty-first century in the context of modern states are often accompanied by flag waving and national anthems, which represent visible and powerful symbols of nationalism and national sentiment.⁷ Given the ‘caricatures of national modes of behaviour and dress that so often provide the colourful backdrop to major sporting events’, it is impossible to overlook that nationalism, in some form, is closely linked to sports.⁸ Sports can therefore be used as a lens through which we can understand national visions and social development in a particular country or test various theoretical concepts of nation-building in a specific context.⁹ In addition, sports can also offer critical insights on colonial legacies and varieties of imperialism in the Middle East. In this study, the focus is on the Gulf region, and especially Qatar.

Although sports have been played for millennia, it is the institutionalization of sports such as football in the twentieth century that is directly linked to the politics of the modern state.¹⁰ The institutionalization of sport, therefore, becomes a means of diplomacy, and what Nye calls ‘soft power’ influence and international competition.¹¹ Consequently, national sports are more than just about playing the game. They also involve the politics of sports and how SMEs are used as political theatre, that is, a venue for displaying the collective strength of a nation and its potential, vision, and unique identity on the global stage.¹² In this context, the role of SMEs and institutions such as FIFA emerge as tools for larger national identity creation but also as venues for international interaction. More importantly, SMEs potentially offer a platform for understanding differences in the socio-political realities and ideological underpinnings of culture and identity across the globe.

Colonial Legacies of Sports

An analysis of international sporting events requires contextualizing the imperialist and colonial legacies of modern sport. The link between modern sports and the modern nation-state was introduced in the European context.¹³ It became a tool through which European colonizers culturally dominated and colonized the Middle East and other parts of the world.¹⁴ Theorizing the effect of colonialism on sports and national identity politics is complicated because the dominant literature is situated in Western scholarship. The dominant narrative argues that the emergence of ‘modern sports’ in nineteenth-century Europe is inherently linked to the rise of capitalism, industrialization, urbanization, and the modern state.¹⁵ Amara argues that the ‘acceptance of modern sport practice by native or colonized populations – which happened most of the time to the disadvantage of traditional games – was explained as a sign of their assimilation of modernist values, and thus, of the Western civilizational project’.¹⁶ In addition, colonizers often imposed modern sports (either physically or ideologically) on colonies as cultural values of civilized people.¹⁷

Nations within the Gulf region were semi-colonized as British protectorates.¹⁸ An indirect imposition of culture occurred through proxy forces such as ruling elites vis-à-vis ideological power and power hierarchies evident in the state-building structures imported, inspired, and facilitated by the British Empire and later by the United States.¹⁹ Zahlan²⁰ and AlSharekh and Freer²¹ explain how British colonialism played a central role in shaping tribal politics in the pre-independence Gulf region. The British involvement with tribal shaikhs not only defined and re-defined national borders, but also affected the evolution of local tribal structures and later influenced the state-building processes, particularly those associated with international relations. In Qatar, treaties such as that of 1916 establishing Qatar as a British protectorate and that of 1934 were key moments in shaping the country’s initial economic and political infrastructure.²² Consequently, the nation-building post-colonial period involved using certain tools and institutional processes, culture, and discourses that were imported into Qatar or borrowed from the West. The how and why of this formula of nation building was determined by the political elite, internal and external – the British and the political advisors from the region. Although Qatar was not colonized like other parts of the world, the nation-building efforts were still shaped and influenced largely by the British Empire on multiple levels, physically, discursively, and ideologically.

Sports and their colonial legacies translated into different realities in post-colonial nation building in different regions depending on the characteristics of colonization. Sports and imperial legacies are therefore better situated in the dialectic pertaining to the constructed binary of ‘modernity’ vs ‘tradition’. The willful or ideologically imposed adoption of modern sports by colonized populations therefore becomes symbolic of assimilation of ‘modernist values, and thus, of the Western civilizational project’.²³ This assimilation often comes at the expense of diminishing, re-inventing, or reframing local sports as ‘traditional’.²⁴ Abu-Lughod use the term ‘alternate modernity’ to explain that certain forms of newly invented traditions are just another form of modernity.²⁵ Certain aspects of local forms of sports are re-invented to create the cultural capital of a nation. This has been increasingly witnessed in Gulf states where sports such as camel racing and falconry have been re-branded and re-imagined as ‘traditional’ forms of sports and then nationally organized ‘to reinforce the younger generation’s interest in the traditional sport’.²⁶

In postcolonial monarchical states, sports became one of the main tools in national identity projects. They were used as the means to mobilize populations to coalesce around a sense of national belonging and simultaneously as a mechanism for integration into the international system.²⁷ The power relations within which modern sports, especially football, are constructed either through the ideological and physical structures are linked to the politics of post-colonial national top-down state-building projects. Both colonial legacies and the national identity politics erased, diminished, or damaged the concept of local sports, which were re-branded to fit in with new state structures and with national culture. The re-branding of tradition sports such as camel racing and falconry also reduced various forms of historically local sports as symbolic representations of ‘authentically culture’.²⁸ This national re-branding has created a neo-traditional narrative which manifests in new realities of a national society in the framework of ethno-nationalism and class politics.

In contrast to the heritage sports, the adoption of football as a Euro-centric sport translated into new realities and perceptions of this sport. From a theoretical standpoint, Bhabha’s theory of hybridity²⁹ provides a framework for understanding the relationship of interdependence between the colonizer/colonized and their constructed subjectivities. Bhabha contends that cultural systems are created in the ‘third space of enunciation’³⁰, which alludes to the ambivalent nature of cultural identity but also challenges the view of hierarchal ‘purity’ of cultures. As a sport that was not historically played in the country, football manifested differently in Qatar, as in other post-colonial nations. Whether people were playing football in local neighborhoods (freej) or enrolling in local football clubs for formal training, these ‘hybrid’ forms of football culture in Qatar cannot be separated from the post-colonial state-society dynamics and emergent new socio-economic realities of the country.

Chatterjee’s concept of inner domain³¹ explains the politics of nation-building and national culture in post-colonial states. He argues that the inner domain consisting of cultural identity is where the nationalists launch their most significant project. This is where an ‘authentic’ national culture is imagined; however, this domain is not left unchanged by national politics. Football culture in Qatar can be seen through both the lens of hybridity and inner domain, with the sport of the colonizer being localized in some manner but also imagined as part of new, yet ‘non-Western’ local national history. All these realities and multiple narratives and perceptions of football in Qatar cannot be studied in isolation from the effects of the ideological, cultural, and socioeconomic aspects of colonization and globalization.

Whether seen through Bhabha’s concept of third space³² or Chatterjee’s inner domain³³, modern sports such as football or heritage sports highlight the centrality of situating sports in Qatar, not only in colonial legacies of sports, but also in the politics of nation-building. It is a post-colonial nation configuring the right formula for the mix between ‘invented tradition’³⁴ and the Euro-centric framework of modernity. This framework helps set the stage to situate narratives about women’s sports participation in nation building in Gulf states and sports politics of post-colonial settings.

Bhabha’s third space implies that new forms of negotiations in the post-colonial society give rise to cultural hybridity ‘which gives rise to something different, something new and unrecognizable, a new area of negotiation of meaning and representation’.³⁵ It is through this dialectic between cultural hybridity and Chatterjee’s inner domain, the inherent tensions between the two theoretical standpoints, and projects of cultural authenticity vs post-colonial nation-building, that we can start to deconstruct images of women in sports participation in Qatar.

Gender Politics, Patriarchy, Women, and Sports

To understand how modern sports are gendered, it is necessary to examine the link between sports and gender and the origins of this link. Feminist scholars have established that nationalism and national identity are inherently gendered concepts.³⁶ Nagel explains the historical and modern state connection between manhood and nationhood.³⁷ This construction encompasses patriotic and heroic manhood and romanticizes mothers as female icons of nationhood, and thus designates the gendered ‘places’ for men and women in national politics. For much of history, women have been assigned a distinct, symbolic role in national discourse.³⁸ These roles included mostly their biological roles as producer of collective ethnic boundaries, ideological participation in maintaining a collective culture, the markers or signifiers of ethnic and national differences (collective culture) and participants in national, economic and political struggles.³⁹ It is in this context of gendered national roles and the nation as a venue for achieving masculinity that one can comprehend the gendered concept of modern sports in the framework of the nation-state. The sports arena is at present dominated by male privilege and patriarchy. Gender-based inequalities and patriarchy are not particular to the Gulf region, they are worldwide trends. Despite the increase of global athleticism, women all in different countries continue to face systematic, structural, and social obstacles denying them full integration into the sports arena. Although women have participated in sports from as early as the Olympics Games in Paris in 1900, women’s professional sports picked up momentum only in the second half of the twentieth century.⁴⁰ Historically, for example, Scraton et al. report on interviews conducted with female footballers in England which revealed ‘most of the women either were not allowed to play with boys or had to battle for opportunities’ in primary school.⁴¹ Similarly, McGinnis et al’.s work with golfers in the United States shows evidence of tokenism and discrimination from men: ‘The token women golfers reported feelings of frustration because of stereotyping, heightened performance pressures due to increased visibility, and role entrapment because of gendered expectations of behaviour’.⁴² In the recent decades, significant improvements in women’s sports participation have been made in some parts of the world. These examples include women’s increased visibility and participation in international and national sports events such as the FIFA Women’s World Cup⁴³ and the Women’s Tennis Association Tour (WTA)⁴⁴. There are several initiatives globally to facilitate gender equality and increase women’s participation in the sports arena. These include the Gender, Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Committee⁴⁵ of the International Olympics Committee (IOC) as well as the European Union’s High Level on Gender Equality in Sports⁴⁶. The increased visibility of women athletes as role models has also positively impacted the realm of women’s sports.⁴⁷ The women athlete icons both globally⁴⁸ and in the Middle East⁴⁹ have brought a positive spotlight to women’s sports participation. However, despite these developments, women in sports continue to face structural and socio-political challenges, in countries like US⁵⁰ as well as in the Middle East region.⁵¹

Sports is a locus for relations of domination and subordination, but also for reproduction of gender relations. Through their critical approaches on sports, scholars have moved beyond the binaries of oppressor/oppressed and men/women. The poststructuralist feminist approach also moves beyond gender as a fixed category but rather as a performance that is socially and discursively constructed.⁵² Using this approach, post-structuralists look at sports as an arena for disrupting the binaries of the hegemonic discourse on femininity/masculinity with the emergence of new forms of transgressive femininities.

Through this lens one can also look at patriarchy as a multi-faceted concept, one that is beyond the simplistic notion of blanket male dominance.⁵³ As Kandiyoti explains, patriarchy is a complex system of male dominance with variations that depend on other factors such as ethnicity and class. Women very often either reinforce, negotiate, or bargain with these patriarchal systems in their societies.⁵⁴ According to Crenshaw, the concept of intersectionality emphasizes that a woman is more than just her gender, and oppression is often shaped by several other factors such as race, class, and religion.⁵⁵ This concept is also echoed by several Middle East authors such as Kareem, who asserts that we must stop treating patriarchy as a single, homogeneous system sent down from heaven to oppress women.⁵⁶ The lens of intersectionality is critical in understanding women’s sports participation in the Gulf region. It must be situated in the politics of post-colonial legacies and nation-building practices that use a certain image of women to construct an ‘authentic’ culture that is rooted in imagined tradition and in sociopolitical imagined boundaries of the private vs the public sphere.

Women and Sports Participation in Qatar

Do Women Need Saving?

Given that sports as a national activity in the public arena is a recent concept rooted in Euro-centric experiences, women’s sports participation in the Muslim and Arab world is unsurprisingly often examined from Euro-centric lens of female empowerment. However, this lens is not necessarily the appropriate one to use outside of the European context. Amara explains how Muslim women’s sports participation is being used ‘as part of the public sphere’ and ‘as an indicator to judge the level of progress and secularization or conservatism in Muslim societies and the degree of integration or acculturation of Muslim minorities in the West’.⁵⁷ As an example, he cites the immigration policies for Muslim immigrants in the Baden Wurttemberg state in Germany. As part of the lengthy interrogation process, immigrants are asked the question ‘Would you allow your daughter to participate in sports and swimming classes in school?’⁵⁸

Similarly, female athletes from Afghanistan, such as 2004 and 2008 Olympian Robina Muqimyar⁵⁹ and footballer Farkhunda Muhtaj⁶⁰ are promoted – and politicized – as symbols of female liberation in Afghanistan. These narratives often fit into the neo-Oriental narratives of ‘Do Muslim Women Need Saving?’⁶¹ used to divert attention from the war crimes and harm caused by the American occupation of Afghanistan. Women’s emancipation is assessed according to their Western-style attire, particularly the lack of hijab. These orientalist notions of women’s empowerment vis-à-vis dress code further perpetuate the simplistic view of Islam as a monolithic entity devoid of multiple cultural influences and present Muslim women as the passive recipients of oppression. Not only does this view discount the agency of Muslim women, but it also overlooks the nuanced, multi-layered, ever-changing forms of patriarchy in the Middle East.

Consequently, it is not at all surprising that many have assumed that ‘religious and patriarchal constraint’ explain why women’s sports participation in the Gulf region has been limited.⁶² For example, Harkness cites Islam and patriarchy as two of the main obstacles to women’s participation in sports in Qatar:

‘Patriarchy is the over-arching feature of Gulf society, with men assuming far greater power in the public arenas of politics and business, while women preside over the private domains of home and family. This often translates into the self-segregation of men and women, who tend to socialize along gender lines’.⁶³

However, barriers to women’s participation in sports exist worldwide, and Harkness’s explanation illustrates a rather exclusivist understanding of patriarchy in the Gulf. Kandiyoti deconstructs this essentialized approach to patriarchy and Islam by explaining ‘the articulation between Islam and different systems of male dominance, which are grounded in distinct material arrangements between the genders but are rather imprecisely labelled with the blanket term patriarchy’.⁶⁴ Instead, Islam and related religious practices can be better understood by considering the history of productive relations between the genders, class, ethnicity, and kinship. This article builds on this nuanced approach of understanding the link between women’s sports participation in Qatar in relation to patriarchy, cultural practices, and the blurred lines between the private and the public spheres through nation-building practices that produce alternate modernity in the name of tradition.⁶⁵

The World Cup and Top-Down Changes

I aim to disrupt the binaries of modern/tradition, oppression/liberation, oppressor/oppressed, old/new, and private/public to explore the spectrum of changes surrounding Qatari (citizen) women’s sports participation in Qatar since 2010, when the FIFA World Cup 2022 was awarded to the country. This analysis reveals the spectrum of developments and nuances surrounding women’s sports development vis-à-vis the World Cup 2022 and contextualizes women’s increased visibility in sports.

The increased female participation in sports is embedded in the strategic development of sport culture in Qatar and the successful FIFA bid played a crucial part in this strategy. This strategy included the goal of increasing overall sports participation of all citizens in Qatar – male and female. The Qatar National Development Strategy makes this clear through the statement under the section ‘First Culture and Sports Strategy’- ‘the need to improve the performance of Qatari sportsmen and sportswomen in regional and international tournaments’.⁶⁶ Although this may be categorized as a positive change in terms of women’s increased visibility in the public sphere, it cannot be divorced from the politics of national image building locally and internationally through the FIFA bid. Both men and women have experienced changes due to the spread of sports culture in Qatar because sports have become a key venue for national identity performance, a new pillar of the national culture. However, it is necessary to situate women’s sports participation as part of the larger top-down women’s empowerment narrative embedded in the National Vision 2030 document, which aims to ‘empower women’ and to make use of synergies in society to create a better future for the country. Qatar focused on the challenging paradox of ‘traditional-modern’ as the guiding principle of the new vision for the state and for a distinct national identity.⁶⁷

To implement the Qatar National Vision 2030 (QNV), the supplementary document Qatar National Development Strategy (QNDS) 2011–2016 was released in 2011. It outlined strategies for ministries to follow to ensure their effective progress toward achieving QNV by 2016. QNDS further solidified the state empowerment approach by highlighting steps to be taken by the state to emancipate and empower Qatari women through an official top-down narrative. Building on this, QNDS chapter five sets the target of ‘Women’s Empowerment’ in highly political and intentional language. To further solidify and institutionalize the women’s empowerment approach, QNV set the target of establishing both ‘a woman’s leadership programme’ and ‘a programme to change public perceptions of women’.⁶⁸ The stated aim of these programs was ‘The perception of women’s roles in Qatari culture will be enhanced through civil society organizations’ advocating for women’s issues and through awareness campaigns and educational media programs that promote women as positive role models and professionals’.⁶⁹ Women’s increased sports participation is linked to women’s increased role in public sphere, which was part of the embedded national strategy for a new national identity. As a result, new sports facilities are developed for women in the Qatar Foundation and around the country, and several Qatari women have started various initiatives related to sports, health, and fitness⁷⁰. It is, therefore, no surprise that women’s sport development in Qatar has been supported by royal and elite women such as HH Sheikha Moza bint Nasser, the mother of the Emir, and HE Sheikha Hind bint Hamad, the sister of the Emir and CEO of the Qatar Foundation.⁷¹

Evolution and Change

Women’s sports are now becoming institutionalized and being embedded in national institutions such as the Qatar Olympics Committee, and certain prominent female icons of sports have emerged in the past few years as faces of women’s sports in Qatar. These women can be understood under a spectrum of themes (to be discussed further in the next section). Some of these themes include tokenism, identity politics, and construction of a new national modernity, as well as the normalization of a certain version of national identity vis-à-vis new images and representations of women in the public sphere. These new images and narratives around women’s public appearances are constructed through various strategies.

A key strategy has been the promotion of women’s sports activities as compatible with cultural and religious values through prominent royal women such as Sheikha Moza.⁷² She has been central to redefining women’s image and participation in the public sphere. Sheikha Moza is the co-founder of the Qatar Foundation and was one of the first first-ladies of Gulf states to appear in the public sphere. She has played an active role in shaping education and national policies and changing women’s role in leadership in Qatar. As the wife of the former Emir and the mother of the current Emir, Sheikha Moza’s closeness to power grants her the ability to normalize changes and introduce new trends for women in sports. She has been at the forefront of leading national sports day activities in the Qatar Foundation, participating alongside other women in sporty, yet modest clothing.⁷³

As a royal woman who has leeway to step outside of societal norms, her leadership of sports activities has served to create a new venue for women’s sports participation nationally. However, Sheikha Moza’s privilege may not extend to other Qatari women, specifically in terms of clothing and appearance in the public sphere. Nevertheless, it establishes a new trend in women’s sports participation by shifting acceptable norms in relation to a new national identity. This kind of top-down change in national narrative can have a trickle-down effect in society when packaged as a new national culture.

New Norms and Traditions

As Qatari authorities create a sporting culture in the country, new sporting traditions such as an annual sports day have been being created.⁷⁴ These new traditions are deconstructing certain old ones, while constructing new modes of modernity vis-à-vis women. During early stages of nation building after independence in 1971, women in Qatar were confined primarily to the private sphere as the new national modernity redefined family and set women’s primary role as the managers of the household. At the time, women’s economic participation was rare and being able to stay at home was seen as a sign of privilege and prestige.⁷⁵

Currently, women’s sports participation has become part of the new national vision, a new national culture that must be normalized in the public. Thus, a new mode of dressing and public appearance in accordance with national values is being introduced and encouraged. This change has been top-down and promoted through institutions such as the Qatar Foundation that have the power to influence and disseminate national trends. In 2015, a Qatari student from the Qatar Foundation and others founded a Muslim women’s sports clothing line.⁷⁶ The brand called OOLA Sports was supported by Sheikha Moza.⁷⁷ The OOLA brand was a crucial moment in women’s sports development as a public statement of the changing nature of women’s appearance and image in the sports arena. Given that women’s image and public conduct are central to national identity building in Qatar, this change signaled a shift to a new identity. Sheikha Moza bint Nasser had already at this point normalized different trends in abayas⁷⁸ (the cloak worn by women) and her support for sports-related attire had the potential to be both normalized and romanticized by certain groups of women.

The public and private spheres in the modern state framework are constructed binaries and are porous categories.⁷⁹ A historical study of the region shows that the concept of private and public was imagined very differently in the Gulf prior to independence and the modern nation-state model.⁸⁰ Prior to independence, women were not always confined to the households, and the concepts of home and household were also very different.⁸¹ In fact, women’s mobility was central to daily activities and maintenance of socioeconomic structures. In this context, even though the concept of organized collective sports had not yet been developed, many different types of local games were played in local spaces and freej (local neighbourhoods). These local games included Taq Taq Taqia, AlRaktia, AlKhashishia, and AlKashati,⁸² which were simple games played without much equipment. Both boys and girls of various ages played these games in the freej, which would be considered a ‘public’ space according to the current definition.

Women’s sports development and participation compose part of a larger movement in identity politics in Qatar, not just a direct consequence of the 2022 World Cup bid. However, the bid set in motion a series of processes that would further enable changes in women’s sports participation in Qatar. A key element in the relationship between women’s sports and national identity politics was the emergence of female icons in the years leading up to the World Cup. These women were seen as harbingers of change in women’s increased sports participation. The next section will further discuss the role and impact of the female sports icon in identity politics and in women’s increased sports participation.

Qatar’s Famous Female Sports Icons

The history of local games defies the dichotomous differentiation between the public and private spheres, as well as women’s restriction to the private sphere. The project of the modern state in a post-colonial setting redefined the neo-traditional and created politicized private/public binaries by situating women in the realm of the private and institutionalizing segregation as part of the new discourse on traditional modern⁸³. Women, who constitute part of the inner domain,⁸⁴ thus became tools for creating an authentically ‘local’ culture rooted in new imaginings of the past.

Given this context, when national sports started to develop in Qatar after independence, specifically football clubs, women’s participation was limited given the neo-patriarchal and neo-traditional ideas around culturally accepted behaviour in a national setting. However, the limitations did not mean that women were not engaging in alternate forms of sports and games in private institutions.⁸⁵ To further understand the contextual realities surrounding national sports in post-colonial settings, one can look at the manifestation of colonial sports such as football in local settings. In Qatar, although football clubs had existed since the 1950s, one of the most common arenas where the sport was played was in freej, mostly between males of different ages, dressed in local attire (thobe) with the local Arabic terms surrounding the game.⁸⁶ The freej had not always been a gendered place. In the early years of independence, young girls also played with boys in the freej.⁸⁷ However, as new infrastructure and national culture developed, young girls were discouraged from playing with boys after a certain age.⁸⁸ Similarly, although football stadiums existed, it was also more common for men to watch football in majlis (gathering place in households) with friends and family. These realities and local trends surrounding football help us understand the nuances surrounding the gendered nature of sports like football in a national socio-political setting.

Changes in Qatari Women’s Sport Participation

Some of the signs of the link between women’s sports development and increased sports participation in Qatar due to the country’s FIFA 2022 World Cup bid⁸⁹ include more venues for women’s sport participation⁹⁰, the formation of women’s national soccer in 2010, and the emergence of prominent citizens (including the naturalized citizens) as female athletes in the public sphere. These athletes include Mariam Farid (hurdler, runner), Lolwa Al Marri (triathlete), Bahia Al-Hamad (rifle shooter), and Asma Al Thani (mountaineer).

Well in advance of the World Cup bid though, the Qatar’s Women’s Sports Committee (QWSC) was established in 2001.⁹¹ The main goal of the QWSC is ‘to encourage Qatari women to participate in sports, excel and improve their lives, create a strong Olympic sports team, and advance Qatari society as a whole’.⁹² This was also the prime time of Qatar’s nation-building during the rule of Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa, who developed the country’s contemporary sociopolitical and economic institutions and defined Qatar’s foreign policy outlook. The committee gained prominence after 2008 when Lolwa AlMarri was appointed president of the committee. As a graduate of the Sports Organization Management program at the University of Poitiers in France and an organizer of the Asian Games in Qatar, AlMarri has both an academic and a practical background in sports.⁹³ In addition to her qualifications, her positionality as a woman from a well-known tribe (AlMarri) is symbolic of women’s public participation in sports being an acceptable new social norm. AlMarri stated in an interview that one of the main goals of the QWSC ‘is to develop community sports by raising awareness, changing women’s lifestyle into a healthier one, and playing sports as a part of their daily lives’.⁹⁴ The QWSC’s mission therefore extends beyond the World Cup and sits within the larger vision of developing a national sporting culture in accord with the National Vision 2030. This mission naturally means including more women in sports and normalizing their participation in the public sphere. AlMarri has been actively involved in sports even before the FIFA bid and the related media frenzy. Mariam Farid, a prominent Qatari athlete, explained to me during an interview, ‘Lolwa has been a mentor to me and has supported me in many ways. I have seen her to be active in the sports arena long before FIFA’.⁹⁵

AlMarri explains that one of the main challenges faced by the committee is ‘attracting girls to sports and forming a team. It is not easy, especially in the beginning, when communicating with parents and trying to convince them’.⁹⁶ Despite all the changes and developments in sports, women’s sports participation still faces challenges rooted in the new sociocultural realities of the country, which includes gendered segregation, the neo-traditional national narrative which assigns women specific roles and requires a performativity of national collective tradition. These barriers, however, cannot be essentialized as solely Gulf-specific issues but rather rooted in the new imagination of sports in a changing national culture in the country.

Similarly, it is also crucial to understand the emerging female sports icons in Qatar through the lens of intersectionality. Intersectionality, as explained by Crenshaw,⁹⁷ highlights the importance of understanding woman are not a homogeneous group. In addition to being women, they have several other identities, such as race, class, ethnicity, and religion, that influence how they experience discrimination. This lens is key to understanding the female sport icons who have emerged and how some of them have been promoted over others. This will help contextualize the ‘women empowerment’ narratives around these women to reveal the politics of nation building through sports.

Trailblazing Icons

Although certain female athletes in Qatar have gained prominence in the past two decades, women who have been active in sports and physical activity have not all gained the same press and recognition. Some of these women were criticized as mis-representing the national identity and the related traditional and religious dress code. Yasmian AlSharshani is Qatar’s first female golfer.⁹⁸ She joined the national golf team in 2008, became the only Qatari woman player to participate in the Arab Games in Doha 2011, and has won numerous regional and local tournaments. Despite coming from a family with a sports background, she indicated in her earlier interviews that Qatar is still developing a sporting culture in which women are encouraged to play sports publicly.⁹⁹ Before the FIFA media frenzy, AlSharshani also spoke about the trends in society and the development of a national sporting culture. In her interview with the Global Sports Mentoring Program, she explained ‘Most of the girls and women here, they go to school and then they go home and do not go outside. They have free time, and if we give them sport they can use that time in a better way’.¹⁰⁰ AlSharshani was involved in public sports before women’s sports participation became part of popular media or gained attention from main stream Western media and from literary discourse in relation to FIFA 2022.¹⁰¹ However, her story has become overlooked, as most of the focus on women’s sports development is now being framed in relation to the World Cup 2022.

Similarly, in the past decade, as women’s sports participation became more normalized, the mountaineer Asma Al Thani, a member of the royal family, has become a prominent figure among women in sports. Al Thani became the first Middle Eastern woman to complete the ‘Explorers Grand Slam’ (adventurers challenge to reach North and South Pole) and climb Mount Everest.¹⁰² This achievement was key in shifting perspectives on female mountaineers in the region, yet several other female mountaineers have not been equally highlighted, including Aisha AlNaama and Dana Al Mannai, who climbed mountains such as Mount Kilimanjaro and Mount Elbrus.¹⁰³ AlMannai, who refers to herself as an ‘adventurer’, has run marathons and is also a personal trainer promoting a healthy lifestyle.¹⁰⁴ In most of the narratives around female sports participation in Qatar, such women are not highlighted because they are not part of official sports teams or not promoted as national sporting icons.

It appears that Al Thani’s greater visibility and promotion in the public sphere is situated in her intersectionality as a woman from the royal family as well as the politics of national identity which led to focusing on certain female icons in the lead-up to the World Cup. It does not mean that women’s interest in sports did not exist prior to the bid, but rather that women’s participation in sports shifted to prominence in the new framework of social change vis-à-vis sports.

Earlier sports icons such as AlSharshani and Nada Zeidan are re-emerging in new narratives as some of the first female athletes in the public sphere both discursively in literature and through new media. A nuanced socio-political approach through a post-colonial, feminist lens helps us see how these changes and trends are part of Qatar’s larger national vision for which sports is a chosen strategy. Women’s participation in sports and related trends are direct and intended consequences of these larger national goals and vision. Farid’s comments speak to this reality, as she explained ‘It’s not that FIFA has done much for women’s sports participation, in fact there were many sports events hosted by Qatar even before the bid and this is what impacted women’s increased participation in sports’.¹⁰⁵ Some of these events include the 1993 Qatar Open Tennis Tournament, the 2004 Asian Men’s Handball Championship, the 2005 Asian Basketball Champions, the 2006 Asian Games, and the 2008 Asian Wrestling Championship.

Another early female sports figure in Qatar is Zeidan, an athlete with a Lebanese-Qatari background. Zeidan represented Qatar in archery during the Asian Games of 2002 and 2006, and she is also the first female car rally driver in the region.¹⁰⁶ Zeidan appeared on Qatar’s national sports scene in the early 2000s when it was still uncommon for women to play on national teams. She was an exception at the time, coming from a family with Lebanese roots. This intersectionality played a key role in her ability to participate in the male-dominated arena and defy patriarchal norms around sports at the time. Zeidan was an iconic sports hero in the early 2000s, well before institutionalized sports became part of Qatar’s national vision and strategy.

Despite the lack of sports organizations for female athletes, Zeidan was supported by state institutions and was promoted as a leading female sporting figure. ¹⁰⁷ Her case represents a more natural growth in women’s sports development in Qatar. It also highlights the various levels of cultural and traditional attitudes in Qatar, depending on an individual’s tribal and cultural background. Women from certain tribes in the Gulf may face patriarchal scrutiny for appearing in the public sphere. In contrast, other women from different families or women from various backgrounds who are naturalized citizens may have a comparatively more liberal familial background. Overall, these politics of conservative vs liberal are not fixed binaries but rather linked to national identity politics. Patriarchy, therefore, does not come in the same shape for all women in Gulf.

Next-Generation Icons

In recent years, several young female athletes in Qatar have become increasingly visible. These athletes, including Mariam Farid, Nada Arkaji, Bahya AlMansour, Noor AlMalki, Ala Mohammed, Tala Abujabra, and Kenza Sosse¹⁰⁸, have been promoted nationally and internationally as the new faces of female sports participation in Qatar. These athletes have been promoted on several national channels and by various institutions, including the QWSC. To many analysts and researchers, these athletes represent a changing culture of women in sports in Qatar. Whilst this may be true at some levels, the analysis omits the elements of identity and sports politics. In particular, it is often overlooked that most of these athletes are naturalized citizens.

Although sports-related naturalization is common worldwide, naturalization is generally almost impossible to attain in Qatar and other Gulf states. Despite the laws and policies on paper, citizenship is based on ethnocracy in Gulf countries and follows the jus sanguinis model. Therefore, citizenship naturalization through sports manifests into different realities in Qatar and requires understanding of the realities and nuances of naturalization in the country. Babar explains how identification with a national identity is strongly linked to status of citizenship in Qatar, noting that Qatari national identity is exclusive rather than inclusive, writing ‘processes of constructing citizenship have been strongly state-driven over the past four decades’ in Qatar.¹⁰⁹ Citizenship is strongly linked to national identity as that is the legal and political relationship between states and individuals residing in the country. Although citizenship is framed through legal status, rights, and obligations, ‘it also extends conceptually to include the more fluid notions of participation and belonging’.¹¹⁰

Under current Qatari nationality laws, citizenship is automatically given only to people who resided in Qatar prior to 1930 and can prove it.¹¹¹ Jus soli, based on birth in Qatar, ‘does not by itself confer citizenship’.¹¹² Citizenship is conferred based on descent and birth to Qatari parents. Naturalization policies are limited, and naturalization is only granted by the state. This process is also a gendered process, Qatari women cannot pass nationality to their children or non-Qatari husbands.¹¹³ In light of these restrictive nationality laws, it is important to note that it is only the athlete, not the family, who is naturalized.¹¹⁴ The Qatari identity of a naturalized athlete is linked directly to her sports performance; the citizenship is temporary and can be withdrawn at any time. It also requires a certain level of performance and appropriate representation of Qatari identity in public.

Certain conservative and patriarchal attitudes tied to authentic ‘national identity’ surrounding women’s sports participation prevail in Qatari society. Nevertheless, the selective sports naturalization of young female athletes, who may come from more liberal families, can help promote a new picture of women in sports in the short-term. One of the more famous female sports icons, Mariam Farid,¹¹⁵ is a graduate of Northwestern University in Qatar and was highlighted in the media appearing alongside English footballer David Beckham on Qatar’s national sports day in 2022.¹¹⁶ A naturalized Qatari citizen, Farid is often promoted on Qatar’s media outlets and, in one interview with ‘Women of Qatar’, she described her experience in representing Qatar at a young age: ‘I would appear in newspapers and social media and work with the Qatar Olympic Committee to represent Qatar to the best of my abilities on an international scale. It was as if I was speaking on behalf of all women teams and women athletes in Qatar’.¹¹⁷

Farid’s belonging to Qatar is not in question here, but her positionality as a woman from a certain familial background accounts for her ability to play sports in the public arena. Although her case demonstrates a positive example of a sportswoman in Qatar, it cannot be seen as representative of changing attitudes about women appearing in sports and wearing sports attire. Her case highlights the politics of sports in Qatar, which uses naturalization as a tool to paint a new image of changing female sporting culture, even as many Qatari women still face obstacles from conservative families. During a recent event about ‘The World Cup 2022 and Women’s Empowerment in Qatar’,¹¹⁸ a female Qatari student revealed that she was not able to play for the national soccer team because she came from a conservative tribal background and her family did not permit it. In contrast, Farid has commented that her father was very supportive of her sporting career, but she also recognized that women from other families and tribes could face different challenges.¹¹⁹

During my interview with her, Farid also explained how she choose to wear the hijab as part of her Muslim identity, even though she has faced comments such as ‘Is it too hot in the hijab?’ during international competitions. ¹²⁰ She also expressed that one of the biggest challenges facing Arab and Muslim women in the sports arena is the continued orientalist portrayal of women in the media. She remarked that ‘Arab and Muslim women in hijab playing sports are portrayed as oppressed and this is not the case’.¹²¹ Similarly, another female interviewee commented ‘some aspects of our culture are advantageous to women, such as having separate lines for women and being seated before men, even though it was portrayed as oppression of women during FIFA. I find this to be a privilege’.¹²² The next section addresses the changing norms around women’s sports in Qatar and a new national sporting culture.

Changing Norms and Creating a New Culture

The complexity of the challenges faced by Arab and Muslim women in sports is threefold, speaking to the multiple and varying intersections of discrimination against women and the consequent multi-faceted nature of the obstacles they face in the sports arena. At home, a woman may be seen as tool for national authenticity as part of the ‘inner domain’ of the nation, while also having the burden of representing an ‘alternate modernity’ in re-making the new women for a new progressive national narrative. At the same time, the cultural ‘hybridity’ which creates new modes of public sports participation for Qatari national, or Arab/Muslim, women also evokes the negative neo-orientalist perceptions of ‘oppressed hijabi women’¹²³.

Nada Arakji, a naturalized Qatari citizen of Palestinian origin, was the first woman to represent Qatar in swimming, at the 2012 Olympics. When she appeared in a video celebrating women in sports in Qatar,¹²⁴ many questioned her ‘Qatariness’ and claimed she did not represent ‘real’ conservative Qatari culture. In the comments section on YouTube, some asked ‘Where’s the hijab?’ and others stated ‘She’s originally not Qatari’.

Arakji’s case shows there is a hegemonic view of Qatariness vis-à-vis women’s public conduct. Although naturalized athletes may be able to defy this view because of their intersectionality, it may signal a change on some level and lead to a deeper shift in views about women’s sports participation, as such views are rooted in broader politics of identity. Although sporting culture may be more inclusive for certain women, a new sporting culture for women cannot generally be seen as a driving force for changing the national culture rooted in politics of authentic identity vis-à-vis women’s dress code. While swimming might be common in many Qatari households with swimming pools, it is usually practiced in the privacy of the home or at segregated beaches and sports clubs. Swimming in public as a form of organized public sport is still not widely normalized in the country.

The triathlete AlMarri, whose mother is Thai, belongs to a well-known and conservative Qatari tribe.¹²⁵ AlMarri became famous for completing the Hamburg Ironman in 2021 to become the first Qatari woman to complete a full-distance triathlon.¹²⁶ When photos of her participation without a hijab first appeared, many Qataris publicly criticized her appearance, questioning her Qatariness. When her photos were posted on Twitter (now X) in connection with her triathlon success, many people commented with racist and discriminatory remarks. One commenter posted ‘I think this is news is from bag [?] and is not correct’,¹²⁷ while another wrote ‘She’s Philipino naturalized citizens and they just added AlMarri tribe name to her’. Someone else posted ‘Where’s the pride in the matter? Did she get a degree or win a trophy or innovate something and is she modest? Is this pride lurking and mixing with men?’¹²⁸ A Qatari woman responded to these comments as follows:

Translation: This is not a mistake and why this racism? It’s normal that her mother is not Qatari and she got her features from her! She’s not the first or last one to be of mixed race. She is AlMarri and has her achievements regardless of whether or not you are with or against her. Every person should respect themselves and not pretend like we’re descended from heaven.¹²⁹

The criticism AlMarri faced as a mixed Muslim Qatari woman cannot be understood without the lens of intersectionality. The reaction to her participation in the triathlon is a manifestation of the concept that a woman does not experience discrimination simply based on her gender; other factors such as her ethnicity, tribal identity, and religion all influence the level and type of the discrimination.

Since modest dress codes are tied to the concept of an authentic Qatari national identity, AlMarri was seen as less of a Qatari based on her sports attire. Differences in her features outside of the dominant narrative of ‘Qatari features’ led to questions about her belonging to her tribe and country. However, Sheikha Hind bint Hamad participated in the same triathlon as Lolwa AlMarri,¹³⁰ drawing scant criticism. In fact, many people congratulated her for promoting women’s sports in Qatar and internationally. Clearly, intersectionality plays a key role in how women’s sports participation is perceived in Qatar. Specifically, a half-Qatari woman from a Bedouin tribe is publicly criticized for wearing sports attire and no hijab and has her identity as a Qatari questioned. Yet, other women can break taboos and normalize new forms of sports participation in Qatar.

During a personal interview about women and sports, a young Qatari woman commented: ‘Even if Sheikha Hind is publicly supporting women’s sports, it doesn’t mean that all families will let their daughters play in public’.¹³¹ Another woman said ‘Many people still comment on girl’s sporting clothes as being indecent, and this may not change very soon, as people care about reputation’.¹³² Another women mentioned ‘my father does not mind me wearing sporting attire but it’s more about what others will say and reputation of the family. It’s not so much about values but about collective image’.¹³³ Nevertheless, Sheikha Hind’s example has had a positive impact on some girls and women in many different ways, with one of the interviewees saying ‘Watching Her Excellency in sports attire has not only motivated me but has set a new example for young girls to follow’.¹³⁴ Through the intersectionality of her privilege and social status as a royal woman, Sheikha Hind has promoted women’s participation in sports in the public sphere both through her own participation in sports but also by providing new venues and collaborations with international sporting bodies. In the latest events, she was seen in a public event with schoolgirls from Qatar Academy as the Qatar Foundation signed a Memorandum of Understanding with Volkswagen to support women’s participation in sports.¹³⁵

Through these examples and multi-faceted discussion on women’s sports participation vis-à-vis nation-building visions, it can be inferred that it is not so much about the empowerment of women through sports but rather creating a new national sporting culture through inclusion of women, while also supporting a change in perceptions of women’s appearance in public. Sports not only become a site for contestation of identity but also become a privileged space locally where only specific women can participate in sports, given the sociocultural barriers. Internationally, it becomes an arena for claiming one’s space and for the representation of Arab and Muslim women. Sports therefore become a cornerstone for international legitimacy, a mechanism of nation building and a strategy for developing a new national culture, with women as key strategic players in realizing this vision.

Conclusion

Using a post-colonial and intersectional feminist lens, this article has deconstructed some of the myths and narratives around women’s empowerment and increased female sports participation in Qatar. It has unpacked the orientalist notion that the 2022 World Cup bid and the lead-up to the event resulted in a change in women’s sporting culture in the public sphere. The study has argued that the history of ‘modern sports’ and its inherent link with Euro-centric nation-building strategies must be contextualized through the colonial legacies of these sports. Football was not historically a local sport in Qatar but was introduced to the region through colonization. Nevertheless, football has manifested as different types of sporting cultures in the region. Sports therefore represent a model of cultural hybridity in postcolonial sociopolitical settings. Nationalists and the political elite use sports, and SMEs in particular, as tools for creating a new national image for branding purposes internationally, exerting soft power through investments in sports but also creating more venues for international visibility. These strategies ultimately foster a strong presence in the international sphere and create stronger local and internationally legitimacy.

National Identity Politics and Sports in Qatar

This article has also homed in on Qatar’s state-building strategies and the role of women in national identity politics in relation to sports. The article has argued that to understand the link between the World Cup and women’s sports participation in Qatar, we must examine the national agenda for women’s empowerment situated in the national vision 2030 through a post-colonial and intersectional feminist lens. The article has provided a more nuanced and multi-faceted approach to women’s empowerment narratives vis-à-vis sports in a post-colonial nation by highlighting the politics of nation building and the strategically evolving role of women in this project. The article has offered multiple layers of analysis through mixed-methods research to highlight the complexity of understanding women’s sports participation in a post-colonial Muslim and Arab country. It is not solely that women are empowered through sports, but rather how Qatar’s nation-building strategies aim to increase women’s visibility in the public sphere as a tool to shape new forms of national identity.

Evolution of Women Athletes in Qatar

The muti-faceted discussion has also offered critical approaches to concepts such as patriarchy, women’s empowerment, and frequent generalizations on obstacles in women’s sports participation. It is not about ‘Islam’ or ‘hijab’, but rather about women’s image and its link to an ‘authentic’ national identity. Ever-evolving identity politics are rooted in the nation’s imagination of an inner domain. The intersectional approach has shown that the burden of carrying a national image in the public sphere exists for Qatari women on varying levels at intersections of tribe, class, and citizenship status, all rooted in power relations. This discussion is situated in identity politics and uses images of certain women to promote a certain version of identity. The article also explores the politics of female sporting icons in Qatar, through the intersections of sports naturalization to problematize the issue of representation of women in sports.

Intersectionality, Trailblazers and Sporting Icons

The development of women’s sport and reshaping of sociocultural values has been led by elite and royal women such as Sheikha Moza and Sheikha Hind, who are seen as trailblazers using their positionality to foster changes in how women are perceived when publicly participating in sports. This has translated into new sporting traditions such as Qatar’s national sports day, but it has also normalized images of women wearing Islamic-friendly sports attire. This is the national process of deconstructing certain concepts around national traditions concerning women’s image to construct a new national modernity.

Overall, the article stresses the need to problematize and unpack sports and the connotations of adapting a colonial Euro-centric practice to a different context. It also sheds light on the erasure of certain forms of local sports and the re-packaging of sports as part of the national identity rooted in narratives of modernity, health and lifestyle. These changes in national culture through sports also constantly challenge the private/public binary by showing the State’s ability to redefine and cross boundaries at certain times and places. By unpacking and demystifying the gendered, post-colonial nation building with sports as a tool for strategic goals, this article has provided a new pathway for the contextual understanding of women and sports in the Gulf region.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Additional information

Funding

Open Access funding provided by the Qatar National Library.

Notes on contributors

Zarqa Parvez

Dr. Zarqa PARVEZ , PhD, a political sociologist and social scientist, Dr. Zarqa Parvez studies nationalism, national identity, and gender studies in the Arab Gulf region. As a scholar of international government, her research also engages international politics, Gulf studies and gender studies. She focuses mainly on women, youth, and the politics of identity in state-society dynamics of the Gulf region, for example framing intersectionality and women’s rights in the Arab Gulf Region and studying youth and social media trends. Her research uses both an intersectional and post-colonial lens to further a comprehensive understanding of society, and to also bring to light marginalized and invisible voices. Her work goes beyond the dominant narratives to explore multiple venues of knowledge, taking a more inclusive approach toward issues of identity, policy making and research agendas. She is on the faculty of International Politics at Georgetown University in Qatar. She has previously taught at Northwestern University in Qatar, Hamad Bin Khalifa University in Qatar, and Lusail University in Qatar.

Dr. Zarqa believes in making academia accessible to the larger audience and hence frequently publishes academic opinion pieces in places like The Middle East Monitor and Aljazeera on topics related to Gulf politics and society. Some of her past research includes ‘Women and Family Friendly Practices’, ‘Intersectionality and Women’s Rights Narratives in the Arab Gulf’, ‘Tribalism and National Identity in the Arab Gulf and Women and Politics of Sports in FIFA 2022’, and other articles on public policy and identity.

Notes

1 Partha Chatterjee, ‘Whose Imagined Community?’, in The New Social Theory Reader (Routledge, 2020): 289–296.

2 Homi K. Bhabha, The Location of Culture (Routledge, 2012).

3 Lila Abu-Lughod, ed., Remaking Women: Feminism and Modernity in the Middle East (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1998).

4 John Postill, and Sarah Pink, ‘Social Media Ethnography: The Digital Researcher in a Messy Web’, Media International Australia 145, no. 1 (2012): 123–134.

5 See Pierre Bourdieu (1978, 1984, 1988) and Benedict Anderson (1983).

6 John Bale, ‘Sport and National Identity: A Geographical View’, The International Journal of the History of Sport 3, no. 1 (1986): 18–41.

7 Alan Bairner, ‘Sport, Nationalism and Globalization: Relevance, Impact, Consequences’, Hitotsubashi Journal of Art and Social Sciences University 49 (2008): 43–53. https://doi.org/10.5860/CHOICE.39-2857.

8 Ibid., 43.

9 Ibid., 44.

10 Pierre Bourdieu, Hugh Dauncey, and Geoff Hare, ‘The State, Economics and Sport’, in France and the 1998 World Cup (London: Routledge, 2014), 15–21.

11 Joseph S. Nye, ‘Soft Power’, Foreign Policy 80 (1990): 153–171.

12 Allison, Lincoln, ed. The changing politics of sport (Manchester University Press, 1993).

13 Simon C. Darnell, Russell Field, and Bruce Kidd, ‘Anti-Colonialism and the Decolonization of Sport Development’, in The History and Politics of Sport-for-Development: Activists, Ideologues and Reformers (2019): 125–159.

14 Levett, 2020; Melo et al. (2018); Domingos, 2013; John Bale and Mike Cronin, eds., Sport and Postcolonialism (London: Routledge, 2020).

15 Mahfoud Amara, ‘The Muslim World in the Global Sporting Arena’, The Brown Journal of World Affairs 14, no. 2 (2008): 67–75.

16 Ibid., 67.

17 Nuno. Domingos, Football and Colonialism: Body and Popular Culture in Urban Mozambique, (Athens: Ohio University Press, 2017).

18 Simon C. Smith, Britain and the Arab Gulf after Empire: Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates, 1971-1981 (London: Routledge, 2019).

19 Guillemette Crouzet, ‘The British Empire in India, the Gulf pearl and the making of the Middle East’, Middle Eastern Studies 55, no. 6 (2019): 864–878.

20 Rosemarie Said Zahlan, The Creation of Qatar (London: Routledge, 2016).

21 Courtney Freer and Alanoud Al-Sharekh, Tribalism and Political Power in the Gulf: State-Building and National Identity in Kuwait, Qatar and the UAE (London: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2021).

22 Zahlan, ‘The Creation of Qatar’, 60.

23 Amara, ‘The Muslim World in the Global Sporting Arena’, 67.

24 Sulayman Khalaf, ‘Poetics and Politics of Newly Invented Traditions in the Gulf: Camel Racing in the United Arab Emirates’, Ethnology (2000): 243–261. https://doi.org/10.2307/3774109.

25 Abu-Lughod, Remaking Women.

26 Department of Tourism and Commerce Marketing, Government of Dubai, ‘Fazza Championship for Falconry’, http://hhc.gov.ae/en/championship/fazza-championship-for-falconry.

27 Mahfoud Amara and Ian Henry, ‘Between Globalization and Local “Modernity”: The Diffusion and Modernization of Football in Algeria’, Soccer & Society 5, no. 1 (2004): 1–26. https://doi.org/10.1080/14660970512331390974.

28 Khalaf, ‘Poetics and Politics’; Abdullah Baabood, ‘Sport and Identity in the Gulf’, in Popular Culture and Political Identity in the Arab Gulf States, ed. Alanoud Alsharekh and Robert Springborg (London: Saqi Books, 2008), 208.

29 Bhabha, Homi. “The postcolonial and the postmodern: The question of agency.” The location of culture (1994): 171–197.

30 Bhabha, The Location of Culture, 37.

31 Partha Chatterjee, ‘Whose imagined community?’, Millennium 20, no. 3 (1991): 521–525.

32 Homi K. Bhabha and Jonathan Rutherford, ‘Le Tiers-Espace’, Multitudes 26, no. 3 (2006): 95–107. https://doi.org/10.3917/mult.026.0095.

33 Partha Chatterjee, ‘Whose Imagined Community?’ in Nations and Nationalism, eds. Philip Spencer and Howard Wollman (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2005), 237–247.

34 Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger, eds. The Invention of Tradition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012).

35 Homi K. Bhabha, Nation and Narration (London: Routledge, 1991): 211.

36 Valentine Moghadam, ed., Gender and National Identity: Women and Politics in Muslim Societies (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 1994); Özlem Altan-Olcay, ‘Gendered Projects of National Identity Formation: The Case of Turkey’, National Identities 11, no. 2 (2009): 165–186; Deniz Kandiyoti, ‘Identity and its Discontents: Women and the Nation’, in Colonial Discourse and Post-Colonial Theory (London: Routledge, 2015), 376–391; Joane Nagel, ‘Masculinity and Nationalism: Gender and Sexuality in the Making of Nations’, in Celebrating 40 Years of Ethnic and Racial Studies (London: Routledge, 2019), 95–122; Jennifer Thomson, ‘Gender and nationalism’, Nationalities Papers 48, no. 1 (2020): 3–11.

37 Nagel, ‘Masculinity and Nationalism’, 253.

38 Ibid.

39 Ibid., 254.

40 Stancometta. ‘The Evolution of Women in Sports and the Path Forward.’ AISTS, November 6, 2023. https://aists.org/the-evolution-of-women-in-sports-and-the-path-forward/.

41 Sheila Scraton et al., ‘It’s Still a Man’s Game? The Experiences of Top-Level European Women Footballers’, International Review for the Sociology of Sport 34, no. 2 (1999): 99–111. https://doi.org/10.1177/101269099034002001.

42 Lee McGinnis, Julia McQuillan, and Constance L. Chapple, ‘I Just Want to Play: Women, Sexism, and Persistence in Golf’, Journal of Sport and Social Issues 29, no. 3 (2005): 325. https://doi.org/10.1177/0193723504272659.

43 “FIFA Women’s World CupTM.” fifa.com. Accessed January 16, 2024. https://www.fifa.com/tournaments/womens/womensworldcup.

44 “The Official Home of the Women’s Tennis Association: WTA Tennis.” Women’s Tennis Association. Accessed January 16, 2024. https://www.wtatennis.com/.

45 ‘Gender Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Commission,’ Gender Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Commission, accessed January 16, 2024, https://olympics.com/ioc/gender-equality-diversity-and-inclusion-commission.

46 ‘FIFA Women’s World CupTM,’ fifa.com, accessed January 16, 2024, https://www.fifa.com/tournaments/womens/womensworldcup.

47 Guest, Andrew M., and Stephanie Cox. ‘Using athletes as role models? Conceptual and empirical perspectives from a sample of elite women soccer players.’ International Journal of Sports Science & Coaching 4, no. 4 (2009): 567–581.

48 Meredith Cash, ‘The 36 Most Iconic Female Athletes of the Past Century’, Business Insider, accessed January 16, 2024, https://www.businessinsider.com/iconic-female-athletes-women-sports-2019-7#maya-moore-31.

49 ‘12 Arab Female Athletes to Celebrate Today’, About Her, March 8, 2022, https://www.abouther.com/node/47366/people/leading-ladies/12-arab-female-athletes-celebrate-today#slide/8.

50 Staurowsky, Ellen J., Nicholas Watanabe, Joseph Cooper, Cheryl Cooky, Nancy Lough, Amanda Paule-Koba, Jennifer Pharr et al. ‘Chasing Equity: The Triumphs, Challenges, and Opportunities in Sports for Girls and Women’, Women’s Sports Foundation (2020).

51 Mohamed, Basant, ‘Power dynamics and family structures in the Middle East: Examining women’s participation in sports’, in Families, Sport, Leisure and Social Justice (London: Routledge, 2021), 84–95.

52 Judith Butler, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (London: Routledge, 2007).

53 Deniz Kandiyoti, ed. Women, Islam and the State (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1991).

54 Deniz Kandiyoti, ‘Bargaining with patriarchy’, Gender & Society 2, no. 3 (1988): 274–290.

55 Kimberlé Crenshaw, ‘Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex: A Black Feminist Critique of Antidiscrimination Doctrine, Feminist Theory and Antiracist Politics’, University of Chicago Legal Forum 1989, no. 1 (1989): 8. https://chicagounbound.uchicago.edu/uclf/vol1989/iss1/8.

56 Mona Kareem, ‘Manifesto against the Woman’, Jadaliyya, December 14, 2016, https://www.jadaliyya.com/Details/32849.

57 Amara, ‘The Muslim World in the Global Sporting Arena’, 71.

58 Ibid.

59 ‘Robina Muqimyar’, Change-makersblog, https://change-makers.blog-tom.com/en/robina-muqimyar.p16.html (accessed February 16, 2023).

60 ‘In the Media: Farkhunda Muhtaj, Captain of the Afghan Women’s Football Team and Humanitarian Activist, Visits FC Barcelona’, Faculty of Education, December 6, 2021. https://www.yorku.ca/edu/2021/12/03/in-the-media-farkhunda-muhtaj-captain-of-the-afghan-womens-football-team-and-humanitarian-activist-visits-fc-barcelona.

61 Lila Abu-Lughod, Do Muslim Women Need Saving? (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2013). http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt6wpmnc.

62 Kelly Knez, Tansin Benn, and Sara Alkhaldi, ‘World Cup Football as a Catalyst for Change: Exploring the Lives of Women in Qatar’s First National Football Team – A Case Study’, The International Journal of the History of Sport 31, no. 14 (November 2014): 1757.

63 Geoff Harkness, ‘Out of Bounds: Cultural Barriers to Female Sports Participation in Qatar’, The International Journal of the History of Sport 29, no. 15 (2012): 2167. https://doi.org/10.1080/09523367.2012.721595.

64 Kandiyoti, ‘Women, Islam and the State’, 24.

65 Abu-Lughod, Remaking Women.

66 Planning and Statistics Authority, ‘Qatar National Development Strategy, 2018–2022’ (2018) 251.

67 Government of Qatar, ‘Qatar National Vision 2030’.

68 Ibid.

69 Ibid,.

70 Sahar ElRefai Qatar Foundation, ‘Sporting Landscape in Qatar Has Changed for Women, Says QF ALUMNA’, QF Stories RSS, March 26, 2023, https://www.qf.org.qa/stories/sporting-landscape-in-qatar-has-changed-for-women-says-qf-alumna.

71 Krystyna U. Golkowska, ‘Qatari Women’s Participation in Sports and Physical Activity’, IOSR Journal Of Humanities And Social Science 22 (2017): 91–95.

72 Khalaf, R., and S. Kerr. ‘Sheikha Moza, matriarch of the modern Gulf’, The Financial Times. London (2013); Sawaly, Dina, Wajdi Zaghouani, and David Kaufer. ‘A Voice for Education: A Digital Analysis of Sheikha Moza’s Public Statements, 2009–2018’ in Social Informatics: 11th International Conference, SocInfo 2019, Doha, Qatar, November 18–21, 2019, Proceedings 11, pp. 239-252. Springer International Publishing, 2019.

73 Joseph Varghese, ‘Sheikha Moza Leads Sport Day Events at Qatar Foundation’, Gulf Times, February 13, 2018, https://www.gulf-times.com/story/581562/Sheikha-Moza-leads-Sport-Day-events-at-Qatar-Foundation.

74 Irene Theodoropoulou and Julieta Alos, ‘Expect amazing! Branding Qatar as a sports tourism destination’, Visual Communication 19, no. 1 (2020): 13–43.

75 Parvez Zarqa, ‘Women Workforce Participation in Qatar: Oil, Culture and Demographic Trends’, in Contemporary Qatar (Springer, 2021), 231–245.

76 ‘Oola: A New Revolutionary Brand Providing Modest Sportswear for Women in Doha’, I Love Qatar, October 11, 2016, https://www.iloveqatar.net/news/general/oola-a-new-|revolutionary-brand-providing-modest-sportswear-for-women-in-doha (accessed December 2, 2022).

77 Qatar QBIC, ‘H.H Sheikha Moza Yesterday Met with the Co-Founders of @oola_sports Who Offer Women More Choices in Loose-Fitting Sportswear. #Qatar #Sports Pic.twitter.com/oiec1lxdgy’, Twitter, October 17, 2016, https://twitter.com/qbicqa/status/787988701662109696.

78 Mohanalakshmi Rajakumar, ‘Assessing the Rhetoric of Sheikha Moza’, in Global Women Leaders: Studies in Feminist Political Rhetoric (2014): 127; Sawaly et al (2019).

79 Mary Ann Tétreault, ‘Frontier Politics: Sex, Gender, and the Deconstruction of the Public Sphere’, Alternatives: Global, Local, Political 26, no. 1 (2001): 53–72. http://www.jstor.org/stable/40645003.

80 Sonbol, Amira, and Kira Dreher, eds. Gulf Women (London: A&C Black, 2012).

81 Munira A. Fakhro, Women at Work in the Gulf (London: Routledge, 2013).

82 Khalifa AlMalki, Traditional Games – Arabic Version (National Museum of Qatar, 2013).

83 Mervat Hatem, ‘Conservative Patriarchal Modernization in the Arabian Gulf’, Contemporary Marxism 11 (1985): 96–109.

84 Chatterjee, Partha, ‘16. Whose Imagined Community?’, Nations and Nationalism, (2005): 237–47. https://doi.org/10.1515/9781474472777-022.

85 Krystyna Golkowska, ‘Qatari Women Navigating Gendered Space’, Social Sciences 6, no. 4 (2017): 123.

86 Charlotte Lysa, ‘Globalized, Yet Local: Football Fandom in Qatar’, Soccer & Society 22, no. 7 (2021): 744–756.

87 Ali Al-Kuwari, Al-awsaj: Seera wa thekrayat [Lycium Shawii: Biography and Memories]. (Beirut: Difaf Publishing, 2015).

88 All interviews were conducted in confidentiality, and the names of interviewees are withheld by mutual agreement. Interview with a female from Qatar Foundation, December 12, 2022.

89 See, for example, various works by Thomas Ross Griffin and Goeff Harkness: Also see Knez et al., ‘World Cup Football as a Catalyst for Change’.

90 Harkness, Geoff, Esther Quiroz, and Kimberly Gomez. ‘Sports and Qatar’s empowered woman narrative’, Sociology Compass 12, no. 11 (2018): e12631.

91 Qwsc. (n.d.). Home. لجنة رياضة المرأه القطريه. https://qwsc.qa/.

92 Ibid.

93 ‘Lolwa Hussein Al Marri, the President of Qatar Women’s Sports Committee Women of Qatar’, Women of Qatar, August 21, 2022, https://womenofqatar.com/2021/07/27/lolwa-hussein-al-marri.

94 ‘Lolwa Hussein Al Marri’, Women of Qatar.

95 Mariam Farid, in discussion with the author April 2023.

96 ‘Lolwa Hussein Al Marri’, Women of Qatar.

97 Crenshaw, ‘Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex’.

98 ‘Qatari Female Golfer Sets Her Sights on Brazil Olympics’, Al Arabiya English, March 18, 2013, https://english.alarabiya.net/perspective/2013/03/18/Qatari-female-golfer-sets-her-sights-on-Brazil-Olympics.

99 ‘Yasmian golfer - interview bein sports’, November 9, 2017, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HmaRbPDPMTo.

100 Yasmian al-Sharshani, ‘Global Sports Mentoring’, https://globalsportsmentoring.org/global-sports-mentor-program/emerging-leaders/yasmian-al-sharshani/.

101 ‘Yasmian Golfer - Meet “Suzy Whaley” in PGA USA’, 2015, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rs7MgZKF08c&t=138s.

102 Asma Al Thani, ‘Join Me on My Incredible Journey to the Summit of Everest’, https://asmaataltitude.sport (accessed December 2, 2022).

103 Elysia Windrum, ‘Qatari Kilimanjaro Climber: We’re Past Gender Segregation’, Doha News, November 2, 2014, https://dohanews.co/past-gender-segregation-unnecessary-qatar-youths-discuss-mt-kilimanjaro-experiences; ‘Qatari Climbers Scale Highest Mountain in Europe’, The Peninsula, September 2, 2018, https://thepeninsulaqatar.com/article/02/09/2018/Qatari-climbers-scale-highest-mountain-in-Europe.

104 Danaalmannai, Instagram, https://www.instagram.com/danaalmannai.

105 Mariam Farid, in discussion with the author, April 8, 2023.

106 ‘Arab World’s Sports Icon’, Nada Zeidan official website, http://nadazeidan.com (accessed December 2, 2022).

107 Gulf Times, ‘Nada Says She Still Has a Passion for Motorsports’, Gulf Times, February 22, 2014, https://www.gulf-times.com/story/382113/nada-says-she-still-has-a-passion-for-motorsports.

108 ‘Women in Qatar Who Have Excelled in Sports’, Sportsmonks, March 9, 2020, https://www.sportsmonks.com/others/women-in-qatar-who-have-excelled-in-sports/.

109 Zahra Babar, ‘The Cost of Belonging: Citizenship Construction in the State of Qatar’, The Middle East Journal 68, no. 3 (2014): 403–420.

110 Ibid., 404.

111 Ibid., 411.

112 James Brown Scott, ‘Nationality: Jus Soli or Jus Sanguinis’, American Journal of International Law 24, no. 1 (1930): 58–64.

113 Article 1, Qatar Nationality Law, 2005.

114 Danyel Reiche, ‘Investing in Sporting Success as a Domestic and Foreign Policy Tool: The Case of Qatar’, International Journal of Sport Policy and Politics 7, no. 4 (2015): 489–504.

115 ‘Mariam Farid: Professional Hurdler’, Women of Qatar, August 21, 2022, https://womenofqatar.com/2021/07/23/mariam-farid.

116 Mariam Farid, Sports Day 2022 at QF was honoured to be one of the official athletes opening the activities of Qatar’s National sports day at Qatar Foundation side by side with the world renowned champion David Beckham. #NSD2022 #NSD22 #nsd #Qatar2022 #beckam #DavidBeckhamTwitter, February 9, 2022, https://twitter.com/mariiam_farid/status/1491498876322435080.

117 ‘Mariam Farid’, Women of Qatar.

118 Center for International and Regional Studies, ‘The World Cup and Women’s Empowerment in Qatar’, November 29, 2022, https://cirs.qatar.georgetown.edu/event/the-world-cup-and-womens-empowerment-in-qatar.

119 Mariam Farid, in discussion with the author, October 8, 2023.

120 Ibid,.

121 Ibid.

122 All interviews were conducted in confidentiality, and the names of interviewees are withheld by mutual agreement. Interview with alumni Qatar Foundation April 1, 2023.

123 Jahromi, Maryam Koushkie, and Ebrahim Koshnam. “Global Politics and Muslim Women in Sport.” ICSSPE Bulletin (17285909) 73 (2017).

124 DohaLink, ‘Qatar’s Women Swimmer’, August 3, 2012, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H-_U61aezEI.

125 Royal Thai Embassy, ‘The Royal Thai Embassy in Doha Congratulates Lulwa Al Marri for Winning Second Place in the QOC 2022 Ultimate Race Triathlon in Doha’, https://doha.thaiembassy.org/en/content/triathlonathlete?cate=5d7e40bb15e39c032c005717 (accessed December 2, 2022).

126 ‘“First Qatari Ironwoman” Lolwa Almarri Makes History’, The Peninsula, September 13, 2021, https://thepeninsulaqatar.com/article/13/09/2021/%E2%80%98First-Qatari-Ironwoman%E2%80%99-Lolwa-Almarri-makes-history.

127 Twitter. (2021, August 30). لولوة المري أول قطرية QA تنهي سباق الرجل الحديدي والذي أقيم في مدينة هامبورغ DE#مرسال_قطر | #ألمانيا | #imhamburg pic.twitter.com/ypqeayci5n. https://twitter.com/Marsalqatar/status/1432439772765736962.

128 Ibid.

129 Ibid.

130 ‘Sheikha Hind Completes Her First Olympic Distance Triathlon’, The Peninsula, September 21, 2021, https://thepeninsulaqatar.com/article/21/09/2021/Sheikha-Hind-completes-her-first-Olympic-distance-triathlon.

131 Interview with 20-year-old female student at Qatar Foundation. November 2, 2022.

132 Ibid.

133 Ibid.

134 Interview with 24-year-old female in Qatar April 10, 2023.

135 جريدة الوطن. (2023, October 6). مؤسسة قطر توقع شراكة مع فولكس واجن. https://www.al-watan.com/article/86792/%D8%A7%D9%84%D9%88%D8%B7%D9%86/%D9%85%D8%A4%D8%B3%D8%B3%D8%A9-%D9%82%D8%B7%D8%B1-%D8%AA%D9%88%D9%82%D8%B9-%D8%B4%D8%B1%D8%A7%D9%83%D8%A9-%D9%85%D8%B9-%D9%81%D9%88%D9%84%D9%83%D8%B3-%D9%88%D8%A7%D8%AC%D9%86